Friday, November 11, 2016 — Manhattan
* * *
The gallery was in a converted loading dock on West 24th, and the Brazilian model was standing in front of a Richard Serra print with a glass of white wine she wasn’t drinking, and Lukas had been watching her for six minutes and had already decided.
Valentina Souza.
Twenty-three.
São Paulo.
Instagram following: 4.2 million.
Agency: IMG.
She’d walked for Dolce & Gabbana in September and Chanel in October and she was in New York for a shoot with Vogue Brasil that had run long, and she was at this gallery opening because the photographer who’d shot her that afternoon had invited her and she’d said yes because she was alone in a city that was not hers and the alternative was room service at the Bowery Hotel.
He knew this because he’d spent thirty minutes on his phone before arriving.
Not surveillance — research.
The kind of research that a woman like Valentina made easy by documenting her life in real time for four million people.
Her body was extravagant.
Five nine in flat sandals — she’d changed out of her heels at the door, a detail he’d watched from across the room — with the proportions of a woman who’d been selected by an industry that valued extremes.
She was wearing a white Jacquemus crop top that ended below her breasts and left her stomach bare, and low-rise white wide-leg trousers that started at her hip bones and showed the full length of her torso — tanned, smooth, taut, the abdominals defined without being muscular, the navel a deep round well in the centre of her stomach.
Her waist was tiny, her hips wide, the trousers riding the shelf of her hip bones and draping over what the crop top’s absence promised: an ass that had been photographed from every angle by every major fashion magazine in South America.
Her breasts were large for her frame — a full D cup, maybe more, sitting high beneath the white crop top, the fabric tight against them, the outlines of her nipples visible through the cotton.
No bra.
They moved when she shifted her weight.
Her skin was a deep golden brown — Brazilian sun and Brazilian genetics and the kind of pigmentation that made white fabric look like it had been chosen specifically to create contrast.
Her hair was dark brown, almost black, long and thick, falling in waves to the middle of her back.
Her face was angular — high cheekbones, a wide mouth with full lips, dark eyes that tilted slightly upward at the outer corners.
She looked like something carved from wood and then polished until it caught light.
He walked to the print she was examining.
“You’re not here for the art,” he said.
She turned.
Dark eyes on his face, then down — shoulders, chest, arms.
Back up.
The assessment took two seconds.
The result was a smile that started at the left corner of her mouth and spread slowly.
“Neither are you,” she said.
The accent was liquid — Portuguese vowels draped over English consonants, each word slightly longer than it needed to be.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Same reason you are.”
She studied him.
He was wearing a black crewneck sweater — fitted, the sleeves at mid-forearm, the fabric showing the ridge of his shoulders and the flat plane of his chest.
Dark jeans.
Boots.
The ring on his left hand.
“You’re not a photographer,” she said.
“No.”
“Not fashion.”
“No.”
“Then you’re interesting.
The interesting ones never tell you what they do.”
“I don’t.”
She laughed.
The laugh was low and warm and it came from her stomach, which moved, the muscles of her abdomen flexing, the navel deepening.
They talked for eleven minutes.
She was sharper than the Instagram feed suggested — she spoke four languages, she’d grown up in Pinheiros, her mother was an architect, her father was gone.
She’d started modelling at sixteen to pay for her mother’s studio and she’d kept going because the money was a number she’d never imagined and stopping felt like a betrayal of the girl who’d started.
He didn’t care about any of this.
It registered, filed, categorised.
What he cared about was the compatibility index flickering at the edge of his vision: 0.38.
Low.
Temporary.
Sufficient.
“Come with me,” he said.
She came.
* * *
His penthouse.
The elevator doors closed.
She kicked off the sandals immediately — barefoot, five nine, her toes on the cool floor.
Her toenails were painted a matte coral that was three days past fresh.
She looked at the empty apartment.
The windows, the city, the park going dark.
“You live like a monk,” she said.
“Not tonight.”
He kissed her.
Hard, immediate, no preamble.
His hand on the back of her neck, his fingers in the thick dark hair, his mouth on hers.
She kissed back with the full-body commitment of a woman who’d decided in the gallery and the elevator had only been a formality.
He pulled the crop top over her head.
Her breasts fell free — heavy, round, the nipples dark brown, wide areolae, the skin between them a shade lighter than her arms and stomach.
They were natural — full and soft with a weight that made them settle slightly apart, the inner curves deep, the underside heavy.
She reached for his sweater.
He let her pull it off.
Her hands went to his chest, his abdominals, the ridges of muscle, the V-cut.
Her fingers traced the line from his hip bone into his jeans.
“Meu Deus,” she breathed.
Her fingers pressed against the ridge of his stomach.
“You’re not real.”
He picked her up — hands at her waist, lifting her like she weighed nothing, and she was five nine and probably a hundred and thirty pounds and he lifted her the way you lift a glass.
Her legs wrapped around him.
Her breasts pressed against his bare chest.
He carried her to the bedroom.
He dropped her on the bed.
She bounced, laughing, her dark hair fanning across the white sheets.
He pulled her trousers off — one leg, then the other.
A thong underneath — white, barely there, a strip of fabric across her hip bones and a triangle that covered nothing.
He pulled it off with his teeth.
Between her legs: bare, completely bare, waxed smooth.
The outer lips full and brown, the inner lips just visible between them — darker, almost mauve, glistening at the centre.
Her clit was prominent, a hard bump at the top of her slit.
Below, the tight pucker of her ass.
He grabbed her left foot.
She was barefoot, the coral polish catching the bedroom light.
He lifted her foot and kissed the sole — the arch, the ball.
She squealed and pulled back, ticklish.
He held her ankle and brought her toes to his mouth and sucked her big toe, his tongue circling it, his lips sealed around it.
Her laughter turned to something else — a gasp, then a moan, her back arching off the bed.
He sucked each toe.
Slowly, deliberately, his tongue sliding between them.
She was gripping the sheets, her hips starting to shift.
He kissed the top of her foot, the ankle bone, the line of her Achilles tendon.
Then the other foot — same treatment, same deliberation, his mouth wet, his saliva gleaming on her skin.
Her hands.
He took her right hand and brought it to his mouth.
Kissed her palm — the centre, the mound below her thumb, the heel.
Then her fingers — each one in his mouth, one at a time, his tongue curling around them.
She watched him with wide dark eyes, her chest heaving, her nipples dark and hard.
He turned her hand over and licked her wrist — the thin skin, the pulse point, his tongue on the blue vein.
She shivered.
Her navel.
He moved down her body — skipping her breasts, a tease she protested with a wordless sound — and stopped at her stomach.
The deep round navel in the centre of her tanned abdomen.
He tongued it — circling the rim, dipping in, his tongue pointed and probing.
She squirmed, her abs clenching.
He sucked at the hollow, his lips sealed around it, pulling gently, his saliva pooling in the depression.
She moaned — louder than the feet, louder than the fingers, a sound that came from deep in her diaphragm.
He bit the skin below her navel — the soft patch between the well and her pubic bone.
Hard.
She cried out, her hands flying to his head.
Her breasts.
He came back to them — taking the left in his mouth, as much of the flesh as he could fit, sucking hard, the nipple caught between his lips and his tongue.
She arched off the bed.
He sucked harder — pulling the breast into his mouth, stretching the nipple, his tongue flat and rough against the sensitive peak.
She was making sounds in Portuguese — broken, rhythmic, urgent.
The right breast.
Same ferocity, same pressure.
He left the nipples wet and red and swollen and she lay there panting while he moved down.
He spread her legs.
Hooked her knees over his shoulders.
Buried his face between her thighs.
He ate her fast.
That was the mode tonight — not slow, not exploratory, but fast, relentless, his tongue on her clit in tight hard circles, two fingers inside her pussy pushing against the front wall.
She was loud — the kind of loud that fills an empty penthouse and bounces off bare walls and floor-to-ceiling glass.
She came in under a minute, screaming, her thighs clamping against his ears, her back arched off the bed.
He didn’t stop.
He kept his tongue on her clit and drove his fingers deeper and she came again — thirty seconds later, harder, her whole body convulsing, her heels drumming against his back.
He stood.
Undid his jeans.
She looked at him through half-closed eyes and reached for his cock with both hands.
“No,” he said.
“Turn over.”
She turned.
On her stomach, her ass in the air — round, firm, tanned, the cheeks full and high.
He slapped the right cheek.
The sound cracked through the room.
She gasped and pressed her face into the pillow and pushed her ass higher.
He entered her pussy from behind.
One stroke, deep, to the root.
She screamed into the pillow.
He gripped her hips and fucked her — hard, fast, relentless, the pace punishing, his hips slamming against her ass.
The sound of skin against skin filled the penthouse.
He slapped her left cheek while he fucked her.
Then the right.
Alternating, rhythmic, the slaps landing in time with his thrusts.
Her screams became continuous — a broken, breathless wailing that she muffled in the pillow and that he didn’t want muffled.
He grabbed her hair.
Pulled her head back.
Her throat arched, her back bowed, her breasts swinging with every thrust.
“Louder,” he said.
She was louder.
She came.
The third, the hardest — her pussy clenching around him in spasms, her whole body shaking, the scream cutting off into silence and then starting again.
He felt it and accelerated — three more strokes, four — and came inside her, the release fierce and concentrated, his hands on her hips pulling her against him.
He pulled out.
She collapsed onto her stomach, breathing hard.
Her ass bore red handprints.
Her hair was tangled and damp.
Her skin was shining with sweat and his saliva from the worship.
He lay beside her.
The HUD flickered at the edge of his vision.
* * * EVOLUTION CP: +4 (TEMPORARY — NO BOND) * * * EVO TOTAL: 25 STAGE: AWAKENING (5%) NOTE: Diminishing returns — different temporary partner, same category.
System prioritises bonded node.* * *
Four CP.
Down from fourteen.
The tree was being polite about its disappointment.
Valentina rolled onto her side and looked at him.
Her dark eyes were drowsy, sated.
“Stay?” she asked.
“I have work.”
She didn’t argue.
She smiled — the same slow smile from the gallery, starting at the left corner — and pulled the sheet over her body.
“Leave the door unlocked,” she said.
“I’ll see myself out.”
He showered.
Dressed.
Left the bedroom.
She was already asleep, her dark hair on the white pillow, her breathing slow.
At the door, he checked the HUD one more time.
* * *BONDED PARTNER NODE: UNESTABLISHED * * * OPTIMAL MATCH: ELIANA ROTH — * * * COMPATIBILITY 0.96 * * * ESTIMATED FIRST BOND CP: 140-180 * * *
One hundred and forty to one hundred and eighty CP from the first bonded encounter with Eliana.
Compared to four from Valentina.
He closed the door quietly and took the elevator down and walked south on Central Park West and the city was cold and bright and his body was quieter than it had been in weeks and the quiet wouldn’t last.